School Admissions: Selective Inclusion

Baroness Cash Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am not sure I would characterise it as an aggressive approach, but it is certainly a key element of the Government’s SEND reform that we ensure children get the right support, whether in their early years setting, their school or their college. That is why we are investing in new training for all staff, better buildings and equipment, and will make sure that every setting has access to expert professional support when it is needed. An inclusive education system for all children and young people requires a strong universal offer, built on high-quality adaptive teaching and early effective support. We will equip and empower mainstream settings to become inclusive by design and to remove commonly occurring barriers to learning. We will invest £4 billion more over the next three years to ensure that happens.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, the OECD PISA survey looks at whether the school that children attended makes a difference to their attainment. Contrary to some of the assumptions underlying the Sutton Trust report, it makes less difference which school you attend here in the UK than in many other countries; we are below average, and that is a good thing. Does the Minister therefore acknowledge that forcing every school to fit one profile risks further constraining parent choice, with very little benefit to the children?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I welcome the noble Baroness to her new role, and I am looking forward to working with her. The answer to ensuring that parents have the choice they want and deserve is to enable all schools to be the type of good schools that any of us who have or have had children would want our children to go to. That means ensuring that we have more teachers in our schools, which we are focused on; ensuring that all schools follow a revised national curriculum; and investing properly in them. These are all things that this Government have focused on, and we will continue to do so to ensure that every parent has the choice of a good school for their child.

Children’s Social Care: Enduring Relationships Strategy

Baroness Cash Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2026 Lords Chamber

The most important thing for us in life is our relationships. The state often finds it hard to put itself at the service of building these loving relationships. In fact, too often it blocks or weakens them. That changes today by making one thing very clear: the purpose of our care system, above all else, is to build enduring loving relationships. I commend this Statement to the House”.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing this Statement to the House and for her kind words to me earlier. I look forward to working constructively with her in the coming months, in the interests of all children and young people.

We on the Conservative Benches welcome this Statement. Indeed, it was the previous Conservative Government who commissioned the review by Josh MacAlister on which this Government’s social care strategy is based. Children who enter care have often experienced circumstances too horrible for us to imagine. As they enter adulthood, as the report reminds us, they report much higher levels of loneliness and isolation, often lacking a single loving or supportive relationship. It is now well established by the evidence that higher numbers of adverse childhood experiences correlate with poorer life and health outcomes, so we will support, where possible, reforms to improve the care system.

I have some questions today. I particularly welcome the Minister’s focus on kinship care, but I wish to raise some points about the target of 10,000 new foster places—a laudable and necessary target. Surely some proportion of this is more easily achieved through the family. Currently, the proportion of fostering households through kinship care is just 20%, but finding foster carers among a child’s kin could be the surest and most efficient way of getting children into a placement in which they already feel a sense of safety and belonging. The biggest barrier is qualifying as foster carers, even though there are significant advantages to a child which might justify a less than perfect score. This would of course have to be done without compromising safeguarding, but it must merit further exploration. Will the Minister commit to revisiting this in this Session?

We recommend the expansion of regional care co-operatives, particularly to encompass children currently on, or at risk of, a deprivation of liberty order. However, I am concerned about the funding of these RCCs. The two RCC pathfinders in Greater Manchester and the south-east received £3.46 million in programme funding and £5 million in capital funding between them. The Government’s paper cites over £10 million to support the expansion of the six new RCCs. Unless I have misunderstood, that is a large discrepancy in per-RCC terms. Can the Minister tell the House whether she believes that this funding will be enough for all the new co-operatives or whether she expects more to be announced in the future?

We welcome the Minister’s resolution to secure the best possible outcome for care leavers, who too often, as I have said, have not a single enduring relationship in their lives. But there are some unanswered questions about how the new enduring relationship metric will be applied, and I would be very grateful for more information from the Minister. Will support for those who score lower be increased? What form will that support take? Will it allow for early intervention before those identified vulnerable individuals have left care? More information on all this would be very welcome. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Lord Mohammed of Tinsley (LD)]

My Lords, I also welcome the Statement. It is important that we in this House send a strong message to young people in care that we are on their side. I know that on many occasions my noble friend Lord Purvis, who has just left his place here, has referred to those young people as having the richest parents—the corporate parents of the state—but often the state, particularly at the local level, has not been there to support them, so we welcome this enduring relationships strategy for children in social care. We have long believed that every child, no matter where they are and what their circumstances are, deserves the best start in life. That is what we want for our children. We the state, at both a national level and a local level, are the corporate parents, and if that is good enough for our own children, it should be good enough for the children under our responsibility.

We have long advocated for children in care because they have often been the ones who are overlooked, particularly those who reach adulthood but clearly still have issues. This overlaps with the debate that I am sure we will have following the Milburn review on NEETs, because those who have been in care are often overrepresented as NEETs. I am sure I will come back to that topic at a later date.

For too long, we have talked about the fact that some young people live in broken relationships. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Tyler, who wanted to be here but could not, because she has long campaigned for children. Often, one sibling is in care and the other is not. Maintaining that relationship is something for which she has campaigned for many years. I thank the Minister for her efforts to support the efforts of my noble friend, so that we were able to get that into the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act in the last Session of Parliament. That was an important change in the law and guaranteed that children in care are supported to stay in contact with their brothers and sisters. We want to make that upbringing closely mirrored to the ones that we all had and that, for example, my children are having.

Kinship care has a vital role in society. So often, that support is something that holds families together, and we have long called for the Government to support it financially. While they are there to support foster carers, we feel that kinship carers should also be better financially supported. Although we support the Government’s intentions, we must remind them that kinship carers still lack financial support. We tried to fix that during the passage of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Act, but on that occasion we did not succeed.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister. The Government mention a new financial allowance pilot for kinship carers. Will the Minister explain why the Government did not support the kinship care amendment to the Bill in the last Session? Similarly, the Government state that their goal is to shift children’s social care towards stronger families and stable homes, and that is welcome. But when a relative or close family friend willing to take on a child is located, they often face immense financial barriers. When will the Government guarantee financial support for kinship carers on a par with that for foster carers?

Equality and Human Rights Commission: Code of Practice

Baroness Cash Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

It is for the independent commission to consult on and put forward the code to the Minister, as it has done. The full code, following the most recent judgment, was received on 3 September by the department. It is important that it is then properly reviewed. As I have outlined previously, various elements must take place; for example, consultation with the devolved Administrations. Then it is the Minister’s responsibility, if satisfied with that code, to lay it before the House under the process set out in the Equality Act.

[Baroness Cash (Con)]

We have had a number of Questions now on this matter so it would be very helpful to the House if the Minister could finally provide a timetable to indicate when we might have this laid before Parliament.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I have been pretty clear every time that I have answered. People might not like the answer. But ensuring that what is laid before Parliament is legally defensible will enable those who need the protection of this code and of the Equality Act to receive it without us being bogged down in lengthy legal proceedings. I think that is a sensible thing for any Government to be spending a bit of time on getting right.